In all industries, there is a need to carefully monitor the performance of assets. In the aircraft industry, technical data relating to an aircraft's performance and maintenance must be collected and monitored so that the aircraft can be certified safe for flight. Current aircraft performance and maintenance systems include data storage means which collect data manually from the aircraft. However, these systems are not good for collecting new data as there is a time lag between collecting the data and adding it to the database. In addition, there is a high risk of human error when the data is collected and of misinterpretation of the data.